TRANI, ARCHDIOCESE OF — Madonna and Child, with stories of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the sides. Detail of a political figure in ivory (French school, 13th century) — Trani, Cathedral.
The cathedral is dedicated to St. Nicholas the Pilgrim, the wandering Greek who died in Trani in the very year that work began, and was canonized four years later under Urban II. Because of the existence on site of the ancient church, to which a new crypt was added beneath the current presbytery, the floor of the cathedral rises five meters above street level, and is reached by two flights of steps. The Romanesque church, in both form and structure, is one of the most typical cathedrals of Apulia: a tall, slender façade facing west with double buttresses on the sides; a cruciform arrangement of openings in the compact mass of reddish stone (rose window and rounded monoforas); a simple and harmonious line in the T-shaped plan with a very high transept and three apses with decorated windows. Moreover, the façade is enlivened by a sensitive play of curves on the lower zone and the outer wing of the right aisle: the eight arches of the façade, remnants of a destroyed or unfinished portico like those at Bitonto, Ruvo, etc., crown the richly decorated main portal in the archivolt and jambs, and the bronze doors cast by Barisano of Trani, the author of the doors of Monreale and Ravello, in the second half of the 13th century, in an art that shows Byzantine, Arab, as well as Romanesque influences (see, more than the panels with symbolic figures and geometric ornaments, those with the scenes of the Deposition and of Barisano at the feet of the patron saint). The interior, with three naves, has undergone restorations and mutilations, such as the ruin of the capitals, chiseled, stuccoed, and painted with oil and varnish in 1837. The matronea are intact, decorated with triforas like those in San Nicola in Bari and the cathedral of Bitonto; still in place in the presbytery are the remains of the ancient floor with scenes of Solomon in the temple and David with the lyre. Of great interest is the crypt of St. Nicholas and the episcopal palace, which preserves the relics of St. Leucio, bishop of Brindisi, translated in the second half of the 7th century into a niche dug for the purpose; the Gothic tomb of Passapope Lambertini and a fine fresco depicting the Madonna with the Baptist and St. Anthony.
The archive preserves 734 parchments, among the most important medieval documents of Apulian life. To the right of the façade stands the bell tower, perhaps the most imposing of all the towers in Apulia, 65 meters high, resting on one side on the church and for the rest on a robust base lightened by two ogival arches. Its construction is the work of several artists: the first two floors with Romanesque biforas belong to Nicolaus sacerdos et protomagister (mid-13th century); the third and fourth, with triforas and quadriforas, are from a century later; the fifth, with pentaforas, small arches, and a terminal spire, dates to 1353–65. Recently, its stability has been a cause for concern.
Besides the Duomo, Trani has other notable churches. That of Sant'Andrea, among the oldest domed churches in the region, is a Greek cross with strong central piers supporting the hemispherical dome. Of the same type, but with three domes inside—hemispherical and pyramidal outside—the larger one on a high drum decorated with small arches, is the church of San Francesco, founded in 1176 by Abbot Benincasa and dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity. Characteristic is the single-cusped façade decorated with small arches, the archivolt of the portal on two corbels, and the surviving piers of a portico perhaps never completed. Another Romanesque building is the small church of Ognissanti (12th century), erected in the courtyard of the Templars' hospital and, until 1312, the property of that Order. It has a double front portico with capitals on slender columns and three finely sculpted portals (the central one preserves two panels with an Annunciation), an interior with three naves and double-chamfered arches, in which are preserved a Venetian-Oriental Madonna and a Virgin with saints by a Venetian school of the 16th century, and three graceful apses all in local stone like the rest of the structure.
Even the towns within the diocese, among the most populous in the province, preserve notable monuments. Of the ancient cathedral of Corato (13th century) only the pointed portal remains, with the bas-relief in the lunette depicting Jesus between the Virgin and the Baptist, and the 14th-century bell tower struck by lightning. Much more interesting is the Gothic church of San Domenico, with a vault supported by shaped ribs and slender corner columns.